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Florian Wagner, "Colonial Internationalism and the Governmentality of Empire, 1893–1982" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
00:57:14
An interview with Florian Wagner
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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [00:05]
B
I'm about to read a list of names that you might recognize. Frederick Lugard, Joseph Caseleigh, Hayford, Les Diang, Georges Ballandier, Arthur Creech, Jones, Lord Haley, Robert de la Vignette, Leopold Sengur, and Julian Huxley. What you might not know is that all of them, formally or not, we're closely connected to something called the International Colonial Institute. The ICI was a colonialist think tank that my guest argues is absolutely crucial for understanding the way European colonialism operated. Welcome to the New Books Network. I'm your host, Eliza Prosperetti, and today we're speaking with Florian Wagner, assistant professor of history at the University of Erfurt in Germany and author of Colonial Internationalism and the Governmentality of Empire 1893-1982. The book has just been published by Cambridge University Press as part of its Global and International History series. Florian, welcome to the podcast.
- [01:11]
A
Hi. Thanks for having me.
- [01:13]
B
I'm delighted to talk about this book. It's really a masterpiece of kind of very wide ranging historical perspective, but written in this very accessible way. Maybe before we dive into the history of the ici, which is kind of the institutional focus of this book, maybe you can introduce yourself to us. How did you come to this project?
- [01:39]
A
Yeah, well, I was doing my undergraduate in Germany and France, which I think was very important for starting the project, because I was working also in my master thesis on colonial lobby groups in both countries. And I read what they published, basically newspapers and journals that supported the colonial cause. And I came across several articles written by French colonial loyalists in German journals and by Germans in France. And I realized that they were talking to each other and also agreeing on many things, especially on how to colonize in the best way. And then I came across this International Colonial Institute, which originally a French colonial lobbyist, Joseph Charibert, proposed or initiated. And he was also very much looking towards Germany, but also towards England and the Netherlands. And, yeah, the whole story started when I was writing my master thesis, doing my undergraduates in Germany and France, and by the surprise to see that colonial lobby groups that were considered as being nationalist or supporting the nationalist cause were actually cooperating across borders. And then I continued to work on this topic in my PhD thesis, which I wrote at the European University in Florence. And now, as you said, I'm an assistant professor at the University of Effort, and the book was finally published in this period of my life.
- [03:43]
B
Florian, after reading your book, I was so surprised, retrospectively, to think about how little I knew about the ici. I kind of vaguely heard about it, but it wasn't something that was really present for me. And I wonder what you think accounts for its relative invisibility in the historiography and in the writing on European colonialism.
- [04:07]
A
Yeah, me too. I was surprised, I think. And the more research I did on the Institute, the more I get to know how important it is or how important it was. And I was also surprised. But I think it has its reasons, for example, that historians are still working on colonialism from a nationalist perspective. They're working on German colonialism, French colonialism, Dutch colonialism, and they didn't pay attention to the international level. Although I think the ici, the International Colonial Institute, was pretty present in the sources, and people constantly came across it. And when I started working on the International Colon Institute, historians told me that they have come across it when working, for example, on disciplines apparently totally unrelated to colonialism, such as the organization of irrigation systems in the Global South. So there are a lot of disciplines that the International Colonial Institute was involved in, but perhaps not that visible because it all either collected information on what was going on and the colonists didn't produce it itself, or it supplied information to its members who were working in different institutions. Institutions as well. And then we're publishing it with other institutions than the ici. That might be one reason. The other reason might be that there are no archives or only parts of the archives of the International Colonial Institute in Brussels. But it's only fragments. And then I needed to go to some 25 different archives to gather information about the Institute and had to access it via its members. That means going to private archives of the members of institutions that were affiliated to the International Colonial Institute, of course, also to national archives. But it was quite some work, and I had to search quite a while to find all the evidence to put together the full picture of the International Colonial Institute and history.
- [06:48]
B
That's a perfect segue. Let's dive into its history. 1893. This is the beginning of the ICI, and you set the scene, you tell us. It's after dinner. There's a Frenchman and a Dutchman, and they've just finished their meal, and the Frenchman pitches this idea to his dinner companion. Tell us about that evening and about the kind of founding and origins of the ici.
- [07:18]
A
Yeah, people. People met frequently, those who called themselves colonial experts even before they established the International Colonial Institute. In this case, in 1893, they met at the house of the Colonial Minister in Amsterdam. They had dinner together. There were delegates from France, the Netherlands, from Great Britain, and they came up with the idea to institutionalize an exchange that had already been there, had been going on for quite a while. They were observing each other, reading each other's publications, meeting on the occasion of world fairs. But they didn't meet regularly. And that is what they wanted to do. To exchange knowledge about how the others colonized. And of course, see whether the other colonized in a better or more successful way. That was the way they defined it and that is how they came up with this idea. And not everyone agreed in the beginning that it is a good idea. But after a while, some 10 years into its existence, most of the most important colonial self styled colonial experts in Europe joined the International Colonial Institute.
- [08:52]
B
I'm curious about the name international. You make a point that they didn't specify that this was a European institute. What was the work that the word international did as they understood it?
- [09:07]
A
Well, that is quite interesting, I think, and I've been reflecting a lot in the book why they called it international. Of course, they lacked the vocabulary of what we would call today maybe a trans imperial or transnational institution. They used the word intercolonial as well, but not very frequently. So the idea was to call it International Institute. And I asked myself why this was the case. And I think I could also to show that in the book that the idea of the international at the time as it is today did not only mean cross border interaction between governments, experts or social movements, but also implied that it was a progressive project. And for those people who basically all considered themselves also as economically liberal, it was important to redefine colonialism as a progressive project. There was a lot of debate going on in the 1890s about the nature and also the sense of colonialism because it was expensive, it was violent, and people were aware of that. And of course, the colonizing countries needed a more legitimate way of colonizing to justify what they did both in the emerging world community, but also in their own countries where there were critics who said colonialism is too expensive and doesn't pay off. So labeling the International Colonial Institute as a. An international project and also progressive project was a way also to save colonialism from ruin and to give it a better name. And that was very important for those who established the International Colonial Institute. And that is I think, also why they call it an International Colonial Institute.
- [11:33]
B
Right at the end of the book you kind of lay out this claim, which I think we're going to come back to, that the crisis that colonialism found itself in, that you just mentioned in the 1890s had some similarities to the crisis of the post World War period. And so one of the main goals or motivations of the ici, as you lay it out, is really to engage in this kind of progressive styled reformist colonial enterprise. And one of the first pieces of that reformist agenda is to professionalize the core of colonizers. To make these administrators people who are going to have status and training, scientific background that's going to legitimize colonialism and make it a rational project rather than the stereotype of the military conquest or.
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A
The.
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European explorer invader. Tell us about this process, how the ICI is involved with this professionalization of the colonial administrator class.
- [12:55]
A
Yeah, professionalization is first of all again their own perspective. They think of themselves of starting this process of professionalization. I think it's fair to say that they succeed in doing that. They establish new colonial training schools that operate on the national or imperial level. That means within the specific empires. But they do exchange curricula, strategies of preparing administrators for living in the so called tropical countries. This is pretty obvious that around 1908 there are new colonial training schools emerging in most European countries. And members of the International Colonial Institute play an important part in establishing them. What is probably more important is that they agree on a certain ideal type of administrator which is then again and linked to the idea of a more progressive colonialism. They want colonial administrators to speak native languages and to respect native culture, customs and laws, which is pretty important for them. So they get prepared in Europe studying so called indigenous culture law and, and languages. And this is an idea that prevails in the International Colonial Institute until the post World War II period. The idea of cultural relativism, that they are colonizing cultures that are different and are supposed to be preserved in their original culture. Later on they call it civilizations and they label that also as a progressive thing. Of course, instead of exploiting people or even killing them, to respect them and also work with the cultural preconditions they have. So that is one thing they do. The other thing is that they are preparing people in a physical way to resist the tropics. This is a big issue in the International Colonial Institute and of course is related to racist thinking. The idea that white people have a hard time living in the tropics and they need to be physically fit to do that and be prepared to do that. So the physical training is also very important when they're preparing people to go for longer periods to the colonies as administrators. And of course they exchange all the knowledge across Europe and Also the colonies of how to colonize in the best way, trying to develop a best practice of colonization. And yeah, I think we. We might go more into detail about that because that touches upon all the different disciplines in the university and what they see as an applied colonial science and that they develop predominantly in the International Colonial Institute.
- [16:53]
B
Right. This idea of the ICI as presenting colonialism as a very scientific project and that it alone has the kind of scientific wherewithal and expertise to examine different cases, different colonial experiences, and come to rational scientific conclusions. You talk about how that was the way that the ICI presented itself, but then you also reveal how its own racist stereotypes basically precluded it from really seeing what was happening. So the kind of classic story of a Eurocentric science that claims to be rational and instead reproduces its own biases. Can you explore that a little bit more for us?
- [17:47]
A
Yeah, there are many ways to see how this happens. Maybe I pick one example from the book, which is about reforming colonial agriculture that is very important also for the members of the International Colonial Institute. Many of them are also spending a lot of time in the Dutch Indies, a place called Boitensork, where there are quite modern laboratories to improve cash crops for colonial agriculture. And what ICI members do, together with the scientists at this institute, is on the one hand, try to improve cash crops for colonial agriculture. Improvement in this case means to increase the yield of the cash crops that they are intending to sell, of course, on the European market. What they also pretend is not only to improve the plants themselves, but also to introduce a new way of growing plants in the colonies. They pretend to abolish the old colonial slave based system of plantation economy from South America, or which they label as coming from South America. Replace this with a new small scale agriculture where individual independent peasants in the colonies are growing the scientifically improved cash crops. They construct this narrative of improving and also liberalizing the colonial economy through agriculture. But what they actually do in the end is to force farmers, peasants from the Dutch Indies, but also in other colonies to grow these cash crops. And in the end, it turns out to be a coercive system that is not so far away from what happened on slave plantations in South America.
- [20:15]
B
At the beginning of the podcast, I listed a few names of the people who were members or who had some connection with the ici. And it's really a who's who of European colonialism and to some extent also anti colonial nationalists. And one of the people who's fundamental in the ICI, but also in the mandates commission of the League of nations is Frederick Lugert, the British Governor of Nigeria and the author of the Dual Mandate. I wonder if you can show us how the dual mandate and indirect rule ideas that he is so famous for having promulgated are drawing on a kind of corpus of policy that the ICI has been developing in the 1910s and 1920s.
- [21:13]
A
Yeah, I think people are talking a lot about Luger, but it's not only him. They are sort of co developing this idea of indirect rule, which is definitely mostly linked to British colonial concepts. But the French members, for example, of the International Colonial Institute are promoting this concept as well. And they learn from each other, as do the Dutch, who are also considered to use indirect rule. And the Dutch Empire is then portrayed as being the most progressive emperor also because of that. The indirect rule concept is very important for the International Colonial Institute and leads us to something that is also very important, which I call in the book Functional Governments or which also the protagonists of that time were calling functional governance. So the idea that you do not necessarily need a state or a nation state to govern within our empire or also on the international, international level. And this idea of international governance, or functional governance, as they call it, is also very important later on in the UN development institutions and other development agencies after 1945. But the idea of functional governance, international governance emerges already in the 1890s and is very important for the International Colonial Institute to appear as a sort of independent actor on the world stage. That is, an expert institution on governing in the colonies, that develops methods, techniques to govern the colonies, but without the help of the state infrastructure. And that is, I think, I mean the nation state, the European nation state infrastructure. And that is very important for how these members of the International Colonial Institute see themselves. And Luga is not only involved in the International Colonial Institute. He is also, of course, involved in the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations in the interwar period. And the International African Institutes. And all these international organizations make use of these colonial experts also to establish kind of international governance in the colonies. And then later on, after some of them become independent in the global South. And the International Colonial Institute, we haven't mentioned that so far, I think exists until 1982. That needs explanation. But the most important thing, or the most important moment is perhaps 1945 or 1949, when the International Colonial Institute is re established. Although colonialism has a bad name at this moment. And they realized that as well in the International Colonial Institute and changed the name into International Institute of Differing Civilizations again to portray themselves as reformist and progressive. By doing so, they try to make forget that they once used to think of civilizations in terms of a hierarchy, that there are different civilizations and the European one is the superior civilization. That is what they're trying to show after 1945 is not the case anymore. They pretend to accept differing civilizations. That means that there is, for example, also the Islamic civilization or the Bantu civilization that they pretend to meet on equal terms, which is obviously not the case. In reality, they're sort of continuing their colonial program also in the post colonial period or in the period when colonialism comes under criticism. But the idea is still there. And they of course then reviving and using these ideas of indirect rule, functional governance, international governance to colonial project. They began in 1893 and then continued in the 1950s and 19. Right.
- [26:13]
B
As you point out, there's the idea of cultural relativism which the ICI uses to promote its progressivism in the early part of the 20th century, is really just a touch and a connotation away from a segregationist approach to the world and to using colonialism to maintain an unequal global order. You mentioned just now that after the war, of course, the ICI really has to rename itself and try to burnish its reputation because colonialism is truly in crisis after the war. But I wanted to rewind to just before the war because one of the aspects of your book and of your history of the ICI that truly surprised me was the rapprochement of the International Colonial Institute members and the Italian fascist project. And so by the late 1930s, you argue that at this important congress In Rome in 1938, you basically have the whole spectrum of European colonial politics, from the so called liberal side to the fascists, coming together and finding common cause in the version of colonialism that the Italians are promoting.
- [27:47]
A
Yeah, I think this is a really important moment and also probably the moment in which the ICI reveals its true character. So there is this meeting in 1938 in Rome where members of the International Colonial Institute meet at a conference organized, proposed by Mussolini and then organized by Italian fascists. Among them the Governor General of Libya, Italo Balbo, who is also in the International Colonial Institute. And they want to revive the Roman Empire, but in a fascist way. And they think of this revived Roman Empire as a so called Euro African Empire and come up with the idea of Euro Africa. The idea has already been there before in the interwar period, but I think in this crucial moment in 1938, it becomes a sort of reality. As well, because Italy at that time is very present in Libya and has conquered parts of Ethiopia. The French have their empire and they are very present there as well. The Germans try to come back. They have no colonies anymore, but they hope that this moment in 1938 will bring them back back, which is a very interesting and important story. I should flesh more out probably in the book, but there was no space to do that. So they meet there and they are also representative from England, for example. It is rather, I would say, that fascist colonial lobbyists are appropriating the liberal colonialism. But liberals are there as well and they don't protest. The most eminent example is perhaps Bronislav Malinowski, whom you might be familiar with, who is a famous anthropologist and also said to be a liberal anthropologist. And like the anthropology of the post war, maybe of the 20th century, is very much building what he's saying. Malinowski is not participating in the congress himself in the meeting, but he sends two papers that are read out and also sends his greetings to the congress. So he is not at all distancing himself from this fascist project. And then fascist colonialism is trying to appropriate the idea of indirect rule, for example, rule via collaborators in the colonies, especially Muslims, the use of the Muslim strength also to strengthen the Euro African Empire. And this is a huge congress where there's a lot going on with again, many immigration, important colonial experts participating. And I think it is a moment where it shows that liberal and fascist colonial ideas are very much compatible. And probably this is also the nature of colonialism as such, that it is somehow linked to the capitalist liberal, obviously, then also neoliberal project of the 19th and 20th century, but also to the fascist authoritarian projects that work quite well together. If they. If we look at the colonial part of, or the colonized part of the.
- [32:08]
B
World, there's this fantastic sentence that you have to make this point, which I wanted to make sure that I quoted back to you, which was colonialism remained Europe's lowest common denominator.
- [32:25]
A
Yeah, it's interesting to see that this, I think, really happened. And there were people who were not able to talk to each other about politics within Europe, but they were able to cooperate on colonial matters. And we can add representatives of Vichy France who are playing a very important role also in the institute. Interestingly, this does not necessarily stop in 1945. The General Secretary of the International Colonial Institute is publishing a report on the Rome Congress, which was in 1938, but the war started shortly afterwards in Europe, so they didn't have time to reflect on the meeting a lot on the Congress and to promote it as well. So they start promoting the ideas of 1938 after 1945. So the Secretary General of the Institute is publishing a report on that and celebrating 1938 as the moment when Eurafrica was born. And ironically, the emerging European Community is also associating or integrating especially French colonies in Africa to the European project which becomes this common Euro African market then especially in 1955 with the Rome treaties. And in a way this idea of Euro Africa lives on. And again, many of the members of the International Colonial Institute, which is now the Institute of Differing Civilizations, are participating in this project of Eurafrica. We need probably to mention that the International Colonial Institute was exclusively a white male institution. And after 1945 they accept representatives of either independent nations from the global South. So Indonesian and Indian delegates are the first to join the International colonial institute in 1949, but they also accept members from Euro African federations. And one example for that is the French Union in France, established after the Second World War, where the French colonies are not called colonies anymore, but part of the new Euro African Union. And probably the most famous representative is Leopold Cedar Senghor, who will later be the President of Senegal, who is also joining the International Colonial Institute or again International Institute of Differing Civilizations and plays an active part in the debates at that point. Nevertheless, the Institute is still an institution that promotes these kind of colonial hierarchies without calling them colonial hierarchies. And the space they imagining in which these hierarchies and inequalities can live on is the Euro Africa.
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B
There's other kind of concepts that the newly renamed ICI mobilizes in addition to Eurafrica, to try to reform itself out of this post war crisis of colonialism and to re legitimize colonialism. You mentioned concepts like functionalism, which we touched on development and also anti racism. Could you maybe flesh out the ideas that the new ICI promote, a renewed ICI promoted around development or anti racism and how these concepts were twisted by them to further promote inequality and segregation.
- [36:53]
A
After 1945, the International Institute of Differing Civilizations did quite a good job in portraying itself as progressive. And concepts like development, civilization and anti racism were crucial to the social project. And both the idea of differing Civilizations and anti racism served to restructure this Euro African project. And they used both concepts in a way that we think, oh, this is progressive, but actually they used it also to justify the perpetuated colonial structures. So how did this work? They started from the idea that there is a Eurafrica now, which means that there is one political economic space that includes the former metropole and former colonies. But of course the fear was still there that within this Euro African Union, the Africans will become a majority. And they actually were. And this was the big debate, for example, in France, that there might be more black voters than white voters in this Euro African Union, or they called it French Union, but it was actually a Euro African project. And that was a problem for them. So they came up with this idea of first differing civilizations, the idea that helped them to segregate Euro Africa again into its two parts, Europe and Africa, because they claimed that these are within a political and economic union, but nevertheless they are two very different civilizations that might be equal, but that cannot really go together very well. Each civilization is supposed to have its own laws, its own culture, its own way of living. And again, going back to the cultural relativism that shaped the ICI's ideology from the beginning, they pretended that the two didn't go together. And that helped them to legitimize the idea that they had to be kept segregated within this Euro African Union. And for example, this is why they denied citizenship or the right to vote to the black population within the Euro African Union. So that is to show a bit how the idea of differing civilizations could be used to actually establish a segregationist society. Anti racism was the same kind of method which they developed a little bit later when many of the African colonies were going towards independence. They claim to be anti racist, not in the sense we would use it today, but using the idea of racism to show how the newly independent states or those who were going towards independence were racist against the former colonizers. And they cite very specific situations. For example, when the Belgian Congo is on its way to independence. And you probably know about all the difficulties that this involved. There is a moment when Europeans claim that they want to, that the Congolese want to get rid of all the white people in Congo. So what the ICI does says that these newly independent states are going towards a racist system that excludes white people from of course politics, but also the economy and from the whole country. So the idea of racism is used by them to delegitimize the newly independent countries as being racist against others. This is a strategy that they have been using for a long time. Also of course involving the idea that these people are inherently racist in the sense that they believe in the different difference of races. Of course, there are several delegates from these parts of Africa that are protesting against that above all, Leopold Cedor Senghor again, and another delegate from Belching, Congo. And it's very interesting to see because this is part of the story of the ICI portraying itself as a very progressive institution. But actually, as I said before, being able to continue the colonial project by using these progressive concepts.
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B
I find this very historical, researched and situated analysis of the concepts mobilized by the ICI to be so relevant for the political moments that we're going through now. And just to reflect on the kind of double speak of power that you can take a concept that seems so evidently one of justice, of anti racism, and curdle it so that it suits the interests of those who are in power. And so I think that's really one aspect of this book that I wasn't expecting to find and that I think really speaks to the present in ways that are unfortunately, devastatingly still so relevant. At the end here of the book, I think you make. The strongest case for the overall argument that you've been drawing out, which is this idea that there is really no real substantial difference between the kind of colonialism that was practiced in the early part of the 20th century and that which was practiced in the middle part of the 20th century. And to buy into that narrative is to buy into the narrative that the colonizers promoted about themselves. And this is an argument that is, to my ears, at least in some senses, very much harkening back to a Marxist critique of imperialism. And at the same time, it's something that is quite different from the historiography in the last 30 years or so around the nuances of empire and the weaknesses of empire and all of the agency and the interstices of different actors. And so I wonder how you see this argument that colonialism is really the same project of exploitation over the 60, 70 year span. How you see that argument fitting in with the broader historiography that has preceded your work.
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A
Yeah, I think this is, of course, a very strong claim that I make. And it. It was important for me that maybe it's not fair to say that colonialism is the same in the 1890s and in the 1960s, but the international Colonial Institute basically does the same in the 1890s and the 1960s. And it is, I think, an institution that also stands for important characteristics of colonialism. So my argument also goes a bit against the idea that colonialism is reformable. And I think some people tend to believe that, especially because colonialism became internationalized. There is this idea that you start in the 19th century with colonial projects, or obviously earlier that are involved in genocides, the settler colonization of the Americas and Australia. And then there is a slight change in the 1890s that starts already with an internationalization project, the colonization of the Congo Basin. And the Congo. Congo, so called Congo Free State, which is then governed by King Leopold of Belgium. But it is an international internationalized colony and an international project confirmed by the Berlin Conference on Africa Congress on West Africa in Berlin. Of course, this project turns out to be also very problematic. But then there is the interwar period and the League of Nations in the permanent Mandates Commission that internationalizes and allegedly also liberalizes colonial rule via the mandate system. And then the post war period after 1945. The strong link between colonialism or late colonialism and development projects, where there are people from the global south participating in the new project of developing the Third World, be it in the late colonial or in the post colonial period, which some also labeled as a new colonial period, of course. And the idea that there is a linear development towards a more liberal and internationalized project of interfering within the Third World is, I think, or can be problematic. And of course, some of the literature that has been published shows how diverse colonial projects became after 1945. But there are others that show how clear the continuity from colonial times to post colonial times was. And I'm thinking there of Veronique Demier's work on Recycling Empire, when she was able to show how the development fund of the European Community was dominated by former colonial administrators who also used their networks both to run the development fund and to distribute the money among their former allies from colonial times. And yeah, I think it is really important to think of how colonialism changed and whether it changed at all. And the International Colonial Institute definitively shows that there was not much change. Also because it portrayed colonialism from the beginning as a progressive thing. And that was taken up later on. A lot of development agencies that are in between international organizations, post colonial organization and institutionally and in terms of personnel, in a continuity to the colonial times, they borrow from the International Colonial Institute. And that also makes up its success. So I think I mentioned in the book that its golden age is actually in the 1950s, when there is a peak in terms of membership, activity, publication, and also acceptance by a broader public in the whole of Europe and in the colonies. So this is a golden age. And it's strange why it should be when the colonial project is in crisis and highly criticized again. But then it does the same thing as it did in the 1890s, portraying itself as an institution that helps to overcome the errors and faults of colonization and emphasizes the positive error. So this is the narrative it had always created of itself. And I think there's a strong continuity there. And we have to beware that we don't buy this story.
- [51:07]
B
Well, that is the job of historians, right, to argue either for rupture or for continuity. So we will put you firmly in the continuity camp.
- [51:18]
A
Yeah, thanks.
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B
As we wrap up here, Florian, I wonder if you can talk us through what you're working on now and what your next project is going to be.
- [51:31]
A
Yeah, I'm still working on international organizations, though in quite a different way. I think rather on those who were active in the field of migration. And I'm working on the emergence of the idea of repatriation after or between the 1950s and the 1990s, which is basically the idea and also the practice then introduced by international organizations to organize the remigration of refugees, labor migrants from the global south who are not supposed to be in the global North. And this is a very important concept that comes up in international organization and also international refugee law and is also, and maybe there is a continuity to the International Colonial Institute, a very problematic concept that assumes that people have to go back to a place where they originally belonged to. And yeah, it's again criticizing a bit the idea of progressive humanitarian international organizations and their role, which turns out to be a very problematic role when it comes to returning migrants forcibly or also declared as a voluntary return to their legit countries of origin.
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B
Laurian, I thank you so much for your work. I think the amount of information that you have been able to process and present in such an accessible way is really remarkable. And I've learned a lot about how to write a fine grained and deeply attentive to detail but history that also speaks to such major and foundational concepts about power and inequality. Thank you very much for your work and thanks for taking the time to speak with me today.
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A
Thank you so much, Elisa, for speaking to me and giving me the opportunity to speak about the book and also to think about the book and what I wrote myself.
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B
I'm glad. I'm glad. And also to take a breather and be happy that this project is off the table.
- [54:15]
A
Yeah, definitely. Thank you, Sam.